A member of the Cato Institute argues that the solution to the immigration crisis is to legalize immigration. Too stupid for words. Or maybe you disagree?
Just Like a Libertarian!
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20 responses to “Just Like a Libertarian!”
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Legalizing immigration is of a piece with legalizing marijuana, no-fault divorce, criminal justice “reform”, etc., etc., etc. Every one of those things leads to less self-discipline and further unravels the delicate fabric of social harmony and shared morality — which are the true bases of “law and order”. Libertarianism — to which I once subscribed — is a foolish and destructive ideology.
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I’m all for legal immigration, but we should not have more than a certain percentage of the people in our country be foreign-born. Also, whatever happened to getting sponsors? That’s how my grandparents were allowed to come.
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Too many dogmatics and ideologues all across the spectrum want to dictate some panacea. They know best and want the rest of humanity to cope with the results of their flights of fancy.
Elected politicians are bad enough even as they at least get a little scrutiny along with the puffery, spin and lies.
Media and pundit people are in many ways worse given their self-anointed genius and infallibility. How they are able to seize some real or imagined high ground and therefrom bombard the public with single issue purity tests and hare-brained schemes is one of the faults of the age.
They can’t fool all the people all the time, and their actions are getting more desperate. Endgame in sight, may be messy. -
Legalising all immigration would indeed solve two crises. The first solution would have immediate effect: there would by definition be no illegal immigration. If you find this is a worthwhile solution, you might want to follow suit with some of the more intractable crimes such as murder, robbery, and rape. But first, make sure that you explain to the feminists how you are going to reduce the rates of what used to be termed rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence, and be sure to record their responses.
The second solution would take longer to manifest, but would be even more fun. Here in the UK, those of us opposed to unfettered migration have the expression “Import Third World, get Third World”. Pro-immigration left-wingers like to turn a blind eye to changes such as public defecation, organised rape gangs of almost exclusively Pakistani origin, and double standards in public life and on the streets because the police are fearful of stirring up Islamic opposition. They know they wouldn’t be able to control it. But in a generation at most, any developed country which throws open its borders in an age of cheap travel and communication will find itself reduced to Third World status.
So the open borders advocates are probably right. When there is no more reason to come to the USA and Europe because immigrants have eroded every economic and cultural advantage that those places once had, then people will stop coming.
I wish you Americans better luck and better politicians than those currently afflicting the UK. -
The legal immigration of the late 19th, and early 20th century was controlled, and many were rejected. That would be OK.
The Cato Institute person is not talking about legal immigration at all, but about lawless immigration. -
Excellent comments, gentlemen, nothing to disagree with.
“Import Third World, get Third World” The ‘migrants’ bring their culture with them and they have no intention of assimilating.
The suicide of the West is unfolding before our eyes. -
How it really was:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URTlhroQ6JU
Mary Clare Malloy by Dolores Keane:
My name is Mary Clare Malloy, I was born in County Cork
At 18 years of age I sailed for the shores of old New York
With 700 picture brides torn tween hope and fear
At last we spied Manhattan and the famous Isle of Tears
My first taste of the New World turned to ashes very fast
The ones who entered freely were from first and second class
We steerage folk remained on board as if we were exiles
The captain turned the ship around and sailed to Ellis Isle
We disembarked and stood in line with chalk marks on our coats
X for mental illness, if E back on the boat
They asked us what our breeding was, could we read or write
The sound of women weeping set the dormitories at night
My best friend was deported back to a poor Killea home
Another sent to Swinburne Isle died of cholera alone
The rest of us were shipped to trains bound for Midwest states
To wild and stormy prairie lands and our prospective mates
He’s American primitive man
In an American primitive land
Irish eyes and calloused hands
American primitive man -
A small but substantive consolation for those of us of a “certain age” is that we knew, and can still remember, the America of the Before Time. It was real. We know it was, because we were there.
How lucky we are to have been born when we were!
PS: R.I.P., Tommy Smothers. -
Is there, then, no hope for Western Civilization?
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Dave,
There is some hope but the case for pessimism is stronger than that for optimism. In any case, we don’t give up. We fight on in the gathering gloom. Get ready for a “long twilight struggle.” We have a moral obligation to do our bit to preserve a great Republic and hand it down to our successors. We of a certain age have had a good run in peace and prosperity and freedom. It is this fact that lays the obligation on us.
On the other hand, this world is a vanishing quantity, so don’t sacrifice your entire life on the altar of activism. If you can bring yourself to believe beyond this life, then do so and engage in the practices (prayer, meditation, metaphysical inquiry, and the like) that may make it real here and hereafter.
Whether or not there is an eschaton, you can be sure it will not be immanentized.
As for the “long, twilight struggle,” it is from a speech by JFK, a Democrat when being one was not a mark of a hate-America leftist jackass. https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/a-long-twilight-struggle/ -
Malcolm,
Spot on, though you are younger than me and not as well-placed to appreciate the truth of your remark.
I am happy to see that you are back in the saddle, blogwise. The rest of you should head over to Pollack’s place to sample his fine writing and clear thinking. -
Joe,
Your point is not quite clear. Are you suggesting that we went from one extreme to another, or that the old way was the right way?
In any case extremism is part of what is doing us in. And that is my beef with libertarians. It is good that they stand for liberty and limited gov’t. But they are destructive fools if you think that a nation is just an economy and not a culture.
And have these knuckleheads given any thought to the fact that their laudable commitment to liberty and limited government is a CULTURAL commitment not shared by the hordes they want to allow in?? -
Illegal immigration won’t stop just because legal immigration criteria and operationally functioning absorption institutions are established. There always will be those who do not meet the criteria for getting in and they will try to cross illegally like today. But probably there will be less illegals if the country has a legitimate track for people who want to do it right and satisfy the criteria (including cultural initiation and an oath to obey the rules of the hosting land). Building proper border controls and establishing rules for allowing in eligible immigrants would go a long way in curbing the current mess. Canada, which badly needs more people for a plethora of reasons, could serve as a reasonable initial model of legal immigration. This model is far from ideal and would require many adjustments to fit US specific needs, but definitely it is better than just work visas with no path to permanent residence, refugees and “only for the rich” visas that US has today. US immigration used to work in the not too distant past…
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Bro Bill, I am suggesting that the old ways were better, and not extreme. Here is an article about Ellis Island in the early 20th century. About 2 percent were not admitted. But doctors looked at everyone.
https://www.history.com/news/immigrants-ellis-island-short-processing-time
One could also make the case that the USA got the smart and ambitious people at that time, those who were fleeing bad governments and systems in the old country, and thus people who knew in their very bones the worth of the freedom they found here. And further, one can plausibly say that the old countries where then left with a residue of lazy and stupid people, both on the top and on the bottom; and that might explain why Continental Europe was idiotic enough to fight two world wars in less than 40 years.
“When are you going to go back and visit Italy?” they asked my great grandfather. “When they build a bridge,” he would reply.
I think we could benefit from immigration in the same way now; getting the bright and ambitious; but we must screen !
Of course the treasonous left does not want to screen anyone. The evil spirits which wander the earth seeking the ruin of souls have found abode in the Democratic party, and also with the Rinos, and they are letting in their minions as quickly as they can.
Anyway, that whole Tom Russell album from which the Clare Malloy song was taken, is well worth checking out:
https://www.soundstagenetwork.com/music/reviews/rev100.htm
And now on to the intelligent and ambitious list of thing to do today, which I have written on my clipboard.
— Catacomb Joe -
Among its missions the Cato Institute promotes free markets and liberty. Fine. Everybody likes free markets and liberty.
Sitting in class decades ago I would copy down the graphs the professor drew on the board of the trade between Country A, which produced corn, and Country B, which produced cotton.
We were taught that the free exchange of goods and services, and the free flows of money and investment, were *substitutes* for labor. Workers were like a constant, they wouldn’t move, they wouldn’t want to move because they were too busy shipping all that cotton and corn around the world.
But no professor ever said, “David Ricardo and his comparative advantage schtick got it all wrong. In order for this model to work, the workers in Country B have to get up and move over to Country A.”
Then Cato’s Daniel Bier comes along and says the opposite: “Let people come and work legally and contribute to this great country.”
Bier got that idea from somewhere, but I pretty sure it wasn’t from David Ricardo. -
Hi Bill,
Spot on, though you are younger than me and not as well-placed to appreciate the truth of your remark.
Well, that may be true. I’m soon to be 69, and I know you are a few years older. But even so, I must be seeing it clearly enough to have posted the comment!
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The US illegal immigration data plotted against US birth rates is alarming.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1740779894538457175?s=20
The position of Trump/Biden line on the chart is not surprising. But the rate of growth of illegal immigration is. -
Thanks, Dmitri. It IS alarming. Under Traitor Joe, the rate of illegal immigration is approaching the U. S. birth rate. How long before the USA collapses? A year, two, five? Place your bets, gentlemen.
We are approaching a ‘perfect’ crapstorm. I’m too young to die, but too old to man the barricades. And I am in the bad habit of taking care of myself. -
Vito,
Or at least London is losing it. Will we learn the lesson in time?
Probably not. Our political enemies can be divided into three groups:
A. The hard-core hate-America leftists who have infiltratred all our institution.
B. The useful idiots who go along cluelessly. Includes not only the inattentive elderly Dems who think it is still 1960, but also Trump-haters like Liz Cheney, Christies, and ther clowsn over at the Bulwark
C. The underclass who want freebies from gov’t and whose votes are harvested by (A).
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